My daughter wanted to take ice skating lessons. Sounded like a good idea. She would get 5 weeks of lessons, free skate rental for the lessons and free open skating with skate lessons for the duration of the lesson time. I asked her if it would be okay if I took lessons at the same time, as the two of us could have something to do together.
We took our first lesson today. It was 35 degrees and raining when we left the house. We got off our exit, it was 31 degrees and still raining. Made it to the rink, hopped out of the truck and almost went on my butt right there. We signed in, got our skates and headed to the locker room we were assigned to put our skates on.
At lesson time, Sarah went off with her class. My class was meeting at the other side of the rink...and on the other end of the rink. Um, how was I going to get over there? I skated a few times as a kid on the lake. Stopping involved either grabbing a post on a dock or skating into a snowbank. That was way back when I didn't realize I could hurt myself. Today I was a wee bit more tentative. I made it to our meeting spot with no mishaps, because I held onto the wall all the way around. No brave moves here! There were a few other women in the class, one had skated before but wanted to learn to go backwards, another had never been on skates and another was like me, had been on skates way back when.
First thing we learned? How to fall. We were told to put our hands on our knees and then touch our toes and sit on the ice. I glanced left and right, the women on each side of me were doing exactly what we were told. I can't touch my toes on a good day on my own two feet, let alone on skates. Okay, hands on knees, I can do that. Touch toes......my brain said sure, My back said, are you kidding me? I managed VERY ungracefully to get down on the ice. Then, the instructor said, get on your hands and knees and stand up. No problem, I can do that. I got on my hands and knees and went to get up..not as easy as you'd think but I was doing it. All of a sudden, 5 heads whipped around to stare at me. Apparently, not everyone else's knees make noises like that. Two more people joined the class. Our instructor had us all do the falling down and getting up again. I opted to skip the second practice.
Next, we went across the ice. Push, push, glide. No problem. Push, push, gli..stop. Push, push, gli..stop. Even weight on both skates when you glide called the instructor. Push, push, glide. Push, push, glide. Hey, I've got this! Thankfully, we only went from side to side. We didn't have to worry about stopping or turning, we just grabbed the wall, turned around and off we went in the other direction. Once we mastered that (and so far we were all on our skates with no falls) we had to do something called swizzles, where you push your feet out and then pull them back in and push them back out. The instructor did a great job and every time she brought her feet together she would glide with speed across the ice. I was able to push my feet out but when I'd bring them in, I'd come to a screeching halt. Push, push, glide. Push feet out, pull feet in. Stop. Push, push, glide. Push feet out, pull feet in....OH IT'S WORKING I DID IT ONCE!!!!. I dropped my hands and looked down at feet and WHOA, LEAN BACK, LEAN FORWARD, HOLY CRAP, I pulled it off and didn't fall. Phew, that was close.
At the end of the 30 minutes, I was a lot more tired than I anticipated, my quads were letting me know they had done more work than they were used to, but I hadn't fallen. Instead of holding onto the wall to get back to the door off the ice, Sarah and I actually skated to the door. It wasn't pretty and it wasn't fast, but we were gliding! We both agreed it was fun and we are looking forward to out next lesson.
Beginning skating advice is good life advice. Push, push, glide. Work hard, push yourself but always remember to glide. You can't push all the time, you need to take a break and assess the situation before you push again.
No comments:
Post a Comment